There are almost exactly five times as many people in the US as in the UK – 314 million vs. 63 million. The violent crime rate in the UK is 3,100 per 100,000, and in the US it is 380 per 100,000 population.

Brits are eight times more likely to be victims of violent crime than Americans. For some reason, Piers Morgan doesn’t talk about this.

AND if you put your license plate only in the front of your car, they WILL shoot you in the face.

You’re right though. Don’t run away. They will shoot you in the back.

Need to wake up Jacob. not all cops are good. Not all are bad, but not all are good. The sooner people like YOU, who tout that ALL cops are good, get that through your skull, the less people like ME who know there are corrupt ones as well and don’t live in denial about it, will come along and correct you.

I can refine this further. Most of the homicide by firearms discharge for black Americans are black males. Half of the murders committed in the U.S. with guns are committed by black males. 6.5% of the population.

I read an article that found that the UK and the USA measure murders very differently and that if you included all the crimes which the US included as murder and/or non negligent homicide that the UK murder rate is nearly twice that of the US..

I doubt that the FBI’s definition of violent crime is the same as that used by the UK govt. Here in the UK, if I raised my voice in a threatening manner it would be put down by the pen pushers as violent. As for murder rates, I expect the ratios are similar to those noted by Gamecock. Not that the govt. would publicize those figures as that would be considered racist.

Steve, I sent your note on crime comparisons to my sister in law. You apparently embarrassed me:
Hi Bill:

Interesting, and since I was among other things, a fact checker at GE–especially of government data sets– I dug into these reports. It appears to me that the two data sets (FBI and UK gov) are really not comparable and are being misread by Steven Goddard. In other words the FBI’s categories for violent crime include only…

Violent crime covers a wide range of offences, from minor assaults such as pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm through to serious incidents of wounding and murder

So, the way I’m reading these data sets, comparing the two as if they measure similar violent crimes will lead to a misreading of the level of violence in UK–it will look much higher when “pushing and shoving” makes the list!

Who is Steven Goddard? Clearly, he’s interpreting the data for some political purpose. They all do that on both sides, in my opinion.

Bill is quite correct, Steven. Unsurprisingly, the less serious the offense, the more common it is; property crime rates, for instance, are an order of magnitude greater than violent crimes.

In the US, the FBI only classifies four types of crime as “violent crime”: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

Therefore, to do an apples to apples comparison, you would have to do a comparison to the UK rates.

As it turns out, this is much, much harder than it seems. While the homicide rate is easy, it is also negligible; while the US has a homicide rate about four times that of the UK, the difference is 1.2 versus 4.8 per 100k – homicides make up less than 1% of violent crimes by the FBi’s definition.

Unfortunately, things get murkier with the other offenses. Aggravated assault has no precise equivalent in British law, which makes it very difficult to compare, and “forcible rape” is not a single crime in the UK (nor in the US, for that matter), and the UK defines rape differently than the US, something for which it has been criticized.

However, if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics, you can see a table of data suggesting that the UK rate is comparable to the US rate, though it is likely somewhat underreported due to differences in reporting. Still, the overall difference probably isn’t that large and, as you’ll note, the numbers are very small – an order of magnitude above homicide, but an order of magnitude below robbery.

Robberies SEEM easy; figures from 2006 put the brits at about 30% more robberies per capita than the US, at 188 versus 146.4 per 100k (note that both rates are lower today, as crime rates have continued to decline). However, this required adjustment by the people doing the comparison, as robbery does not apparently have the same definition from the US to the UK.

Aggravated assault which is the single most common sort of violent crime in the US (and probably in the UK as well), and the fact that this is not the same in the UK as in the US is a big problem for comparison. According to http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/feb/07/crime-statistics-england-wales-violent-sexual-offences , which unfortunately reports ABSOLUTE numbers, there were 498k woundings in a year. Now, it is tempting to say wounding = aggravated assault, but unfortunately, British law is rather stupid. A wounding requires that either blood is spilled or that serious bodily harm be inflicted, or that you are intending to do so. Unfortunately this isn’t the same thing as aggravated assault, so you have to take the number with a grain of salt. Assuming you said “Okay, this is close enough”, though, it would put their wounding rate at a whopping 787 per 100k – vastly outstripping total violent crime in the US. However, that chart also gives a much higher robbery rate (401 per 100k) than the other data I was looking at, which makes me wonder how the earlier comparison was done. The US rate of aggravated assaults for 2012 was 242, as a point of comparison – so there are three times more woundings in the US than there are aggravated assaults in the US.

Unfortunately, this is further complicated by the fact that the number of incidents is slightly misleading; you’ll note that the numbers don’t actually add up, and that’s because a robbery where you got threatened with a knife would count as both wounding and robbery, so it would have two entries but only be one incident of violent crime. As our goal is to look at the overall incidence rate, this makes everything all the murkier.

The UK may have a higher rate of “violent crime” by the FBI’s definition, but the rate is probably closer to twice that of the US – while the wounding rate is quite high, the rates for other crimes are not all that different by comparison, so the difference is probably pretty much entirely in the wounding rate… which unfortunately is also the shakiest statistic as wounding and aggravated assault aren’t the same crime. Overall, your odds of being killed are four times higher in the US, but they’re very low in both countries, whereas your odds of being violently assaulted might be as much as three times higher in the UK… but that’s likely an overestimate.

Note that assaults with minor or no injury (which includes assaults merely threatening minor injury) outnumber woundings three to one, so just using the straight-up overall violent crime rate is clearly wrong – those are definitely not aggravated assaults, and likewise are much more common than aggravated assault in the US as well.

Drawing from a recent paper by Carlisle E Moody, Andrews notes in her article that contrary to liberal received wisdom widespread gun ownership by law abiding citizens tends to make people safer.

This is true historically:

Homicide was increasing before the invention of concealable firearms and decreasing after. While there may be many other theories, the sudden and spectacular decline in violence around 1505 and again around 1610-1621 is consistent with the theory that the invention and proliferation of concealable firearms was responsible, at least in part, for the decline in homicide. The landscape of personal violence was suddenly and permanently altered by the introduction of a new technology. The handgun was the ultimate equalizer. The physically strong could no longer feel confident of domination over the weak.

It reflects the experience of the US:

Even in the United States today, criminals are reluctant to encounter armed victims. In 1981 Wright and Rossi interviewed 1874 incarcerated felons in ten states. Eighty-one percent agreed with the statement, “A smart criminal always tries to find out if his potential victim is armed.” Thirty-four percent report being, “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim. (Wright and Rossi 1986, pp. 132-155) Using the same data, Kleck found that, among criminals who had committed violent crimes or burglaries, 42 percent had been deterred during an attack by an armed victim and 56 percent agreed that, “most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.”(Kleck 1997, p. 180)

And it doesn’t say much for British gun law policy which, over the years, has made us all demonstrably less safe and more likely to get shot – like the unfortunate chap who was out for a walk one day a few hundred yards from where I used to live in South London and made the mistake of nodding one of those embarrassed friendly greetings you give to scary local yoof types in a bid to discourage them from mugging you. For his troubles he was shot in the testicles.

The government in England has been placing increasingly stringent controls on guns especially handguns, since 1920, reducing both the actual and the effective supply of firearms. (Malcolm 2002) The homicide rate in England in 1920 was 0.84 and the assault rate was 2.39. In 1999, the corresponding rates were 1.44 and 419.29. Thus both the homicide and assault rates increased as the effective supply of handguns declined.

Andrews calculates that this represents a 17,544 per cent increase in England’s assault crime over the last 100 years.….

I can only assume that while living in the UK, “Steven Goddard” (the conservative Republican voting, pro gun, anti-Obama, anti-socialisim, climate change-denying conspiracy theorist idiot that he obviously is), was constantly and consistently told to shut the fuck up or risk being punched on the nose, every time he voiced his nasty, bigoted opinions. Everything, literally EVERYTHING he’s written on the subject of which country (US vs UK) has a higher crime rate is demonstrably false. Steven Goddard distorts the truth to fit his disturbingly rightwing worldview. The man’s a liar. It’s as simple as that. At this point, I’m surprised he hasn’t been snapped up as a pundit for Faux News. The saddest part is that some people are stupid enough to take him at face value and believe his lies. “Steven” – you’re an awful person. Get of the internet. Never come back.

Apparently we Americans are more tolerant than you Brits about speech, having the first amendment and all. Funny, because I really enjoy checking out the oratory in Parliament sometimes, because unlike our congress it allows reactions of agreement or disagreement, humor and even disdain for the speaker during the speech. But I’m sure you would change that for everyone but yourself and those that agree with you if you had your way you leftist twit.

@ Gail – I love the way you keep mentioning ‘The Asians’ is if they’re some shadowy force out to get us all. Keep drinking the Kool Aid and hunker down in your Panic Room, you beautifully ridiculous loon.

I think Steve should get the benefit of the doubt. IF he were wrong (and hearsay doesn’t establish that), it doesn’t follow that Steve has a nefarious political agenda: someone’s imputing motives on no evidence whatsoever!

You don’t think a right-wing conservative political bias is a political agenda?
Steven Goddard doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt on this because he’s completely, demonstrably wrong. Everything he’s written on this subject is so full of shit he could sell it to famers as manure.

Violent crime statistics are recorded differently in both countries. In the US it has to be violent acts such as murder, rape, aggravated assault. In the UK a push is a violent crime, a grab on the shirt is a violent crime, harassment (verbal) is a violent crime, verbal threats are a violent crime. The majority of violent crime in the UK doesn’t involve in any injury to the person

Also in the US you record incidents as acts against the person, whereas in the UK they are recorded as separate incidents. e.g If a guy abuses his wife in the US thats 1 incident of violent crime. In the UK each incident is recorded separately as a violent crime, so if a man hits his wife 5 times in a year thats 5 separate crimes.

I’ve read the UK doesn’t even count things like murder unless a guilty prosecution is obtained. So 5 people viciously murdered in the UK aren’t counted as murdered until a suspect has been determined guilty and sentenced for the offenses. That’s not the way it works in the US. We don’t give 21yr prison sentences for 77 people massacred or allow the public to force an early release of ‘misunderstood & rehabilitated’ serial killers like in the UK who predictably resume their killing spree’s after release.

Where’d you read that, Alex Jones? It is absolutely false. Canada and the UK both include LESSER violent crimes in their violent crimes statistics, which is perhaps (not guaranteed) the reason that Canada and the UK have higher numbers per capita.

It is absolutely ludicrous to even entertain the idea that a murder stat wouldn’t include crimes that are unsolved. You should be ashamed of admitting to considering it in public.

The idea that the UK is somehow vastly more violent than the US is laughable. Mostly because people interpret the data completely incorrectly. Saying “I’ve lived in both places” is meaningless – you haven’t lived in every single part of the UK or US at once, so your personal observations are irrelevant. http://dispellingthemythukvsusguns.wordpress.com/

I like how those idiots whine about a mere ‘push’ constituting a violent crime in the UK. It’s actually no different than in the USA, where any unwanted physical contact constitutes an assault and is reported far more often.

The USA has the highest perception of police efficiency among in its citizens in the world, thus more criminal offenses are reported to police which is further shown in the highest jailed population in the world.

The increase in jailed US citizens corresponds to the progresives closing down state mental institutions in the 1970s and tossing the inmates out “To be integrated into society” (I did a long comment on it about a month ago but did not save the pointer)

So now we have sidewalk sleepers and prison inmates and psychos with guns shooting people BUT IT IS ALL the fault of gun loving republican retards.

According to Progressives it is NOT OK to put the mentally ill into institutions against their will but it IS OK to drug the shit our of our children if they give a progressive teacher any problems. And if the parents disagree the child is removed from the parents and given to the state to raise,

You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Pushing is not considered violent crime in America. a fat misfit shooting dead a unarmed teenager with a bag of skittles isn;t even considered a crime.

Anyone who thinks England is more violent than America is delusional.

I don’t think many impoverished blacks from your extensive ghettoes have much confidence in your police either.

I live also in USA and UK. In Berwyn (Chicago) and Bracknell (London). Chicago is much violent to London and I feel very safe in London in compare to Chicago.

This from link from Bob Lowes.

CONCLUSION: =======================================
While it becomes clear that certain types of offenses are marginally higher in the UK than in the US (robbery and knife crime being more likely in the UK by an order of 1.1x and 1.27x respectively) a number of other, more serious offenses, are both marginally and substantially higher in the US. Rape of a female is 1.02x more likely in the US, while theft of a vehicle is 1.29x more likely. More disturbingly, burglary is significantly higher at 1.52x more likely to occur in the US. However, it is at the considerably more, well, violent crimes that America really supersedes England and Wales into its own class. In the United States, you are 6.9x more likely to be the victim of aggravated assault resulting in serious injury than in the UK. You are 4.03x more likely to be murdered than in the UK. And more staggeringly (though not surprising) you are 35.2x more likely to be shot dead in the Unites States than in the UK. Before anybody asks, no, these do not take into account justifiable homicide and other “acceptable shootings”, nor do murders for that matter:

I like how all the disprovers are only looking for things to make UK’s statistics lower, but ignore things like the fact that the UK collates crimes (go into a business and shoot 5 people in the USA, and its 5 murders. Do so in england and its 1 murder case) as well as things like the UK only counts convictions while USA counts indictment. A corpse for which noone is convicted of murdering is still a murder in the USA, it isn’t in the UK

Completely incorrect. In the UK, that would be recorded as a single incident (an incident being when the Police are called out to deal with something) with five murders. Each murder would be recorded as a separate crime. Incidents and number of crimes committed are not the same thing.

Conveniently you failed to mention that the US population is five times greater than the UK. The US is actually ranked #112 in murder rates among the world, which isn’t that bad considering the size and population.

@Nexus
I’m afraid you are misunderstanding the statistic – the murder rate takes into account population. For the US to be ranked 112th in the world is not a result to be proud of particularly when you look where other advanced western countries are on the UNODC list. The US has a significantly worse record on homicide than any other country it would wish to be compared with.

It is sad aspect of human nature to look for facts to support what we want to be true – rather than look for facts that might challenge and enlighten us. We all do it from time to time even if it does us no credit.

As a UK citizen, it is none of my concern if the US is having an internal debate about crime and gun ownership. It is none of my business if the prison population is justified or not – or whether the police are right to kill more people in a year than ours have in a century. It’s your country, and ours is different – we don’t have hand guns and it suits us that way. There are plenty of arguments Americans may wish to deploy about gun ownership – culture, constitution, security. Whatever – it’s entirely a matter for you. However…however what I do object to is when someone spreads untruths about my country – and it is patently wrong to suggest that the UK is more violent than the US which is why no serious academic or criminologist would ever make such a claim. (Facts should not be ‘twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools’ to quote Kipling.)

You are justifiably proud of your country, and I am of mine – most of the time. I am proud that the homicide rate is so low, and that I have walked alone at night in London all my life without ever worrying that I might be attacked.

I wish you well in resolving your domestic arguments – but please don’t disrespect my country in the process (we are allies after all).

The UK Violent Crime rate isn’t anywhere near as high as the US. The reason for these figures is that the FBI classes far fewer types of crime as being violent than the UK police do. The FBI only include forcible rape, murder and non-negligent manslaughter, robbery and aggravated assault. The UK on the other hand includes such things as a push (common assault). More than half of reported violent crime in the UK involves no injury to the victim.

The US, for instance, has a murder rate where firearms are used 35 times higher than in the UK. Even burglaries are higher, despite households keeping guns for protection.